China's otherworldly mountains that inspired Avatar

Zhangjiajie, China's first national park, also features glass-bottomed bridges, a mountain elevator and a food court complete with a McDonald's for those inclined to take it easy.

Shy was not an impatient person, but even she struggled to keep her cool when I whipped out my phone to take what must have been the 100th photo of the same view. Shy – short for Shen Hong Yan – was my guide through Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in central China, and she knew there were better viewpoints up ahead. But I couldn't bring myself to move on just yet; the soaring sandstone quartz pillars of this forest were unlike anything I had seen anywhere else in the world.

Located in the north-western corner of Hunan province, Zhangjiajie is China's first national park, established in 1982. This forest is part of the larger Wulingyuan Scenic Area that was included in Unesco's list of World Heritage sites in 1992 and later given Global Geopark status in 2001. The name may be a tongue-twister, but there is an easier way to remember it – as the inspiration for the Hallelujah Mountains that featured in the blockbuster movie Avatar. In fact, before I visited Zhangjiajie, that was the only fact I knew about this place. Shy confirmed what I had suspected: that Zhangjiajie used to be an underexplored destination even among Chinese tourists before the movie catapulted it into their consciousness.

The film franchise's official website says: "The Hallelujah Mountains are comprised of mountains floating in the air above Pandora." And while the ones I was gaping at didn't exactly levitate, the way they rose up from the ground through a wispy blanket of cloud and fog gave them an otherworldly feel. Hence the reluctance to tear myself away.

But Shy was right, and the scenery did get increasingly spectacular as we hiked on. When we reached the rockstar attraction – the solitary quartzite-sandstone pillar that the local tourism department has labelled "Praise the Lord Mountain" (a loose translation of Hallelujah) – she was practically jumping up and down with excitement. "This is what everyone comes for," she said, explaining the crowds clustered around this viewpoint trying to capture the imposing majesty of this natural spectacle on their tiny phone screens.

Originally called the "Southern Sky Column", this rock soars 1,080m into the air with clumps of dense foliage outgrowth adding splashes of bright green to the overwhelmingly brown landscape. I waited patiently for the chattering groups to move away for a chance to finally enjoy a moment of solitude and silence.

"We used to call this 'qiankun'," Shy whispered, hesitant to break into my reveries. The word means 'Heaven and Earth", signifying that this pillar connected the two. An apt name for what seemed like a piece of Earth reaching up to the very skies. From my vantage point, it looked like the pillar was thinner at the base than at the top, but it stood steady and unyielding, just as it has for millions of years. 

Scattered through the park are more than 3,000 such pillar rocks and jagged peaks, formed by the process of natural erosion and the persistent movement of gentle water cutting through hard stone. The area encompassed by the national park is quite small, at just more than 48sq km, further divided into smaller sections that make it easy to cover the highlights in a couple of days. The most spectacular lookout points are in the areas known as Yuanjiajie, Tianzi mountain and the Yellow Stone Village (known locally as Huangshizhai), and that was where we initially focused our energies.

While there are several walking and hiking trails for people of all skill and stamina levels, there are also shuttle buses, cable ropeways and even an elevator on the mountainside for those inclined to take it easy and just tick off the top photo locations. As it happens, the Bailong Elevator – which whisks 50 people to a height of 326m in less than two minutes – is one of the park's star attractions, with people queueing up for hours in peak season for a ride.

That was my first clue to how different hiking in China can be compared to countries in Europe and North America, where I had hiked in the past. Here, there were clusters of cafes and souvenir shops, loud voices and even louder music blaring from speakers all along the trails. So, I was not entirely shocked when at lunchtime, Shy took me straight to the bustling mountaintop food court, complete with a McDonald's outlet and dozens of street food stalls. 

However, the spectacular views and the fanciful names for each of them – Fields in the Sky, No 1 Bridge Under Heaven, Three Sisters Peak, Ecstasy Terrace – more than made up for lack of tranquility. It was a dull, grey day with the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds, and when we stopped on top of Tianzi mountain after lunch to look for the "Fairy Maiden Giving Flowers" outcrop, Shy was disappointed we didn't get a clear view. But I was delighted by the way the swirling mist made it seem like a traditional Chinese painting come to life.

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By the time we descended the mountain, the mist had begun to clear, and we hiked for a couple of hours along the gurgling brook known as Golden Whip Stream. This easy walk provided an interesting ground-up perspective of the rock pillars, with the crowds thinning out a few hundred metres into the trail. Shy fell into step with me and we walked on in utter silence punctuated only by the sound of running water and the occasional screeches of the brown macaques who have learned to recognise humans as potential snack sources. 

The next morning, the thick clouds seemed to follow us to Tianmen mountain, located an hour away in the heart of Zhangjiajie town. This area is not part of Zhangjiajie National Park, but Shy recommended it highly for its "something special". Much like the elevator inside the national park, the big draw here is the cable car that goes up and down the mountain. Sitting inside the eight-person glass gondola, I could see what the excitement was all about. This is the world's longest cable car ride, stretching more than 7km and taking around 30 minutes to reach the top. It glides at a hair-raisingly steep incline and offers 360-degree views of the towering peaks and the mountain road with 99 sharp bends.

I quickly discovered that with its numerous glass-bottomed bridges and cliff-edge trails, Tianmen is not for the faint of heart. I could hear my heart thudding loud and fast in my ears, as I took one tentative step after another on the glass-bottomed bridge shrouded in fog. It was definitely a bad time for Shy to point out that this skywalk was originally called the "Walk of Faith". Visibility remained poor through the morning, but I could see the faint outlines of pillars and peaks much like the ones we had seen inside the national park. And then on to the special part – the cavernous arch between two hilltops that Chinese legend considers the doorway to heaven (hence the mountain's local name Tian Men Shan, or "Heaven's Gate Mountain"). 

While many tourists huffed and puffed their way up the 999 steps to reach the mouth of this cave, we chose to stand at the open plaza at the bottom and look up despairingly at the white curtain covering the landscape. And suddenly, in one of those unexpected moments that makes travel so exciting, the clouds parted, the mist lifted and the cave appeared. People around us gasped loudly, some even clapped. I just gazed in awe. 

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